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> The desktop really doesn't need reinventing. I'm surprised people think this. Do you think we're going to still be using the Windows 95 model in 10 years? S

> The desktop really doesn't need reinventing. I'm surprised people think this. Do you think we're going to still be using the Windows 95 model in 10 years? Sure, the relative importance of the desktop will diminish as other forms of input become viable, but we're not there yet. I still do 95% of my work in a desktop environment with multiple windows and everything, just like I did 10 years ago. The difference is that the desktop environments I have access to now are better than the ones I had then. I hope that trend continues.

10098 14y ago
> Do you think we're going to still be using the Windows 95 model in 10 years? I sure hope so. It's ideal for laptops and desktop PCs, or at least none of the alternatives are good enough.
- freehunter 14y ago
  Are the alternatives worse, or are they just different? Obviously anything sufficiently different enough to be called disruptive is going to throw off your workflow. The mitigating factor in how much anyone is going to like change is how quickly they can adapt to the change. If the answer is never (or a long time), the change stops being relevant (think Dvorak keyboard). If the answer is reasonably quickly, you find a sliding scale of market penetration between trackball mice and computers that print stdout to screens instead of paper. The question is, is the desktop metaphor still a good one? I would argue it never was good, just necessary. My question is, why do I have to move my mouse here and there to get things done on a desktop? Why is it so painful to use a laptop trackpad to get here and there with any accuracy? Newer window managers try to mitigate that by removing the need for a mouse altogether. That's a step in the right direction, I think.
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    Worse. Don't take my word for it, this is a falsifiable statement. Run usability studies on both novice and experience users with different desktop models and metaphors. Ensure that you're not just testing initial impressions, but usability after a week, a month, a quarter, a year. I've used Windows, Macs, and multiple Linux desktops for years on end. Hands down the environment that lets me get the most done with the minimum of hassle and interference is Linux. My desktop (used on both traditional PCs and laptops) minimizes mousing actions by maximizing keyboard inputs to perform work and manage my GUI). WindowMaker.
    - freehunter 14y ago
      My favorite DE/WM is one where I don't have to click on a shortcut to launch an application. So in Gnome 2... well you can install Gnome-Do, but out of the box that fails. Gnome 3/Unity, just hit Super and type. Done. Windows Vista/7, hit Windows and type. Done. OSX has a similar feature from what I hear. There really is nothing more I need from a WM, everything else is value-add. The entire purpose of a desktop is to get me between applications.
      - dredmorbius 14y ago
        WindowMaker: - Hit F2 to invoke run dialog, type command (I've substituted gmrun for the default WMaker run dialog which lacks history or command completion). - Your defined hotkey. I have launchers for terminals, edtiors, web, and mail clients -- stuff I need frequently. - Menus can be keyboard-driven. F12, and arrow-navigate to your desired item.
        bkor 14y ago
        You can do the same in GNOME.
        dredmorbius 14y ago
        Pinnable window menus? Really?
zxcvb 14y ago
I want you to get downvoted for the Hitler reaction video reference. You know what I'm talking about.
jsz0 14y ago
I don't think the desktop needs reinvention. Enhancements and modernizations are great but our workflows are so refined at this point the cost of reinvention is ridiculously high. If you take away something that works for the user and replace it with something new they better be sure it's so much better the users are willing to throw away existing workflows and experience. I've yet to see anything that would justify throwing it all away. Within the constrains of keyboard/pointer input on a 2D display it's going to be tough to make that huge leap forward. I suspect the next big leap forward will be AI advanced enough to just eliminate the need for these carefully crafted workflows. If I could tell my computer what I wanted to achieve and let it sort out the workflow I wouldn't care as much about the UI. Even then I would still need a classic desktop interface available for tasks too complex to explain to the computer -- or too complex for it to figure out on its own.
- monkeyfacebag 14y ago
  > our workflows are so refined at this point Whose workflows and at what point? Do we think the children born today will be satisfied with GNOME 2 (or GNOME 3 for that matter)? I agree that we're playing fast and loose with the definition of "reinvention" here (and that GNOME 3 is clearly not a reinvention of anything--to be fair, he started it!), but I think there's room for better than incremental improvements in all facets of computing, including the desktop.
  - dman 14y ago
    The success of this reinvention hinges on being able to attract the next generation of hackers. The future belongs to them and they should be encouraged to invent is as they see fit. The risk is that throwing away the existing way of doing things pushes away people who are active contributors and have know how about the codebase. So far the desktop is losing because the next generation of talent seems to be fixated on the web stack at this point.
    - na85 14y ago
      That fixation will change. We're seeing a resurgence of the server-terminal paradigm that was popular in a bygone era. People enjoy the idea of not having to sync their data because it's all "on the cloud" (eyeball roll) and because they have a 3G modem. Sooner or later that enthusiasm will fizzle out.
rhizome 14y ago
Do you think we're going to still be using the Windows 95 model in 10 years? Maybe. We used the command-line model for 25+ years before that.
- macavity23 14y ago
  We still do, for suitable values of 'we'.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    That's the '+' :)
dredmorbius 14y ago
We're still fundamentally using the PARC Alto model. We've got windows. We've got keyboards. We've got mice. In some cases we've now got multi-touch keypads and touch-sensitive screens. Some screens are very large. Some are very small. Some are in-between. There have been some improvements: processors are vastly faster, pixel densities are increasing, and rendering has improved. We've got some hacks for displaying fonts more clearly. But those are pretty minor. Compiz effects if you want to get flashy, but those are hardly necessary. I've seen master developers completely satisfied, and massively proficient, in hacked-up twm environments. Really: the desktop is a solved problem. Move on. I've looked at many of the "modern" desktops. And I'm still using the same one I was using 15 years ago: WindowMaker, based on NeXTstep. It's simple, it's fast, it's light, it's stable. It's not visually distracting. It gets out of the way. It supports keyboard shortcuts and navigation. It presents me with persistent pinnable window lists (something no other window manager / desktop environment provides me) and pinnable submenus. What the desktop developers for GNOME, Unity, Microsoft, et al are forgetting is Anoine de Saint Exupery's dictum: perfection comes not when there is nothing left to add, but nothing left to take away. There's an implied "and what is left is sufficient to the task at hand".

10098 14y ago

> Do you think we're going to still be using the Windows 95 model in 10 years? I sure hope so. It's ideal for laptops and desktop PCs, or at least none of the alternatives are good enough.

freehunter 14y ago
Are the alternatives worse, or are they just different? Obviously anything sufficiently different enough to be called disruptive is going to throw off your workflow. The mitigating factor in how much anyone is going to like change is how quickly they can adapt to the change. If the answer is never (or a long time), the change stops being relevant (think Dvorak keyboard). If the answer is reasonably quickly, you find a sliding scale of market penetration between trackball mice and computers that print stdout to screens instead of paper. The question is, is the desktop metaphor still a good one? I would argue it never was good, just necessary. My question is, why do I have to move my mouse here and there to get things done on a desktop? Why is it so painful to use a laptop trackpad to get here and there with any accuracy? Newer window managers try to mitigate that by removing the need for a mouse altogether. That's a step in the right direction, I think.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  Worse. Don't take my word for it, this is a falsifiable statement. Run usability studies on both novice and experience users with different desktop models and metaphors. Ensure that you're not just testing initial impressions, but usability after a week, a month, a quarter, a year. I've used Windows, Macs, and multiple Linux desktops for years on end. Hands down the environment that lets me get the most done with the minimum of hassle and interference is Linux. My desktop (used on both traditional PCs and laptops) minimizes mousing actions by maximizing keyboard inputs to perform work and manage my GUI). WindowMaker.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    My favorite DE/WM is one where I don't have to click on a shortcut to launch an application. So in Gnome 2... well you can install Gnome-Do, but out of the box that fails. Gnome 3/Unity, just hit Super and type. Done. Windows Vista/7, hit Windows and type. Done. OSX has a similar feature from what I hear. There really is nothing more I need from a WM, everything else is value-add. The entire purpose of a desktop is to get me between applications.
    - dredmorbius 14y ago
      WindowMaker: - Hit F2 to invoke run dialog, type command (I've substituted gmrun for the default WMaker run dialog which lacks history or command completion). - Your defined hotkey. I have launchers for terminals, edtiors, web, and mail clients -- stuff I need frequently. - Menus can be keyboard-driven. F12, and arrow-navigate to your desired item.
      - bkor 14y ago
        You can do the same in GNOME.
        dredmorbius 14y ago
        Pinnable window menus? Really?

zxcvb 14y ago

I want you to get downvoted for the Hitler reaction video reference. You know what I'm talking about.

jsz0 14y ago

I don't think the desktop needs reinvention. Enhancements and modernizations are great but our workflows are so refined at this point the cost of reinvention is ridiculously high. If you take away something that works for the user and replace it with something new they better be sure it's so much better the users are willing to throw away existing workflows and experience. I've yet to see anything that would justify throwing it all away. Within the constrains of keyboard/pointer input on a 2D display it's going to be tough to make that huge leap forward. I suspect the next big leap forward will be AI advanced enough to just eliminate the need for these carefully crafted workflows. If I could tell my computer what I wanted to achieve and let it sort out the workflow I wouldn't care as much about the UI. Even then I would still need a classic desktop interface available for tasks too complex to explain to the computer -- or too complex for it to figure out on its own.

monkeyfacebag 14y ago
> our workflows are so refined at this point Whose workflows and at what point? Do we think the children born today will be satisfied with GNOME 2 (or GNOME 3 for that matter)? I agree that we're playing fast and loose with the definition of "reinvention" here (and that GNOME 3 is clearly not a reinvention of anything--to be fair, he started it!), but I think there's room for better than incremental improvements in all facets of computing, including the desktop.
- dman 14y ago
  The success of this reinvention hinges on being able to attract the next generation of hackers. The future belongs to them and they should be encouraged to invent is as they see fit. The risk is that throwing away the existing way of doing things pushes away people who are active contributors and have know how about the codebase. So far the desktop is losing because the next generation of talent seems to be fixated on the web stack at this point.
  - na85 14y ago
    That fixation will change. We're seeing a resurgence of the server-terminal paradigm that was popular in a bygone era. People enjoy the idea of not having to sync their data because it's all "on the cloud" (eyeball roll) and because they have a 3G modem. Sooner or later that enthusiasm will fizzle out.

rhizome 14y ago

Do you think we're going to still be using the Windows 95 model in 10 years? Maybe. We used the command-line model for 25+ years before that.

macavity23 14y ago
We still do, for suitable values of 'we'.
- rhizome 14y ago
  That's the '+' :)

dredmorbius 14y ago

We're still fundamentally using the PARC Alto model. We've got windows. We've got keyboards. We've got mice. In some cases we've now got multi-touch keypads and touch-sensitive screens. Some screens are very large. Some are very small. Some are in-between. There have been some improvements: processors are vastly faster, pixel densities are increasing, and rendering has improved. We've got some hacks for displaying fonts more clearly. But those are pretty minor. Compiz effects if you want to get flashy, but those are hardly necessary. I've seen master developers completely satisfied, and massively proficient, in hacked-up twm environments. Really: the desktop is a solved problem. Move on. I've looked at many of the "modern" desktops. And I'm still using the same one I was using 15 years ago: WindowMaker, based on NeXTstep. It's simple, it's fast, it's light, it's stable. It's not visually distracting. It gets out of the way. It supports keyboard shortcuts and navigation. It presents me with persistent pinnable window lists (something no other window manager / desktop environment provides me) and pinnable submenus. What the desktop developers for GNOME, Unity, Microsoft, et al are forgetting is Anoine de Saint Exupery's dictum: perfection comes not when there is nothing left to add, but nothing left to take away. There's an implied "and what is left is sufficient to the task at hand".